Strait of Malacca

Where it is

The Strait of Malacca runs roughly 800 kilometres between the Indonesian island of Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, connecting the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea. It narrows toward its south-eastern end, where the Phillips Channel near Singapore has a navigable width of about 2.7 kilometres and is shallow enough to constrain the largest vessels. Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore border it. The alternatives — the Sunda and Lombok straits through the Indonesian archipelago — are considerably longer.

The land and water around it

• The Malay Peninsulaplateau

  The strait's eastern shore, whose ports — Melaka, Penang, Port Klang, and Singapore at its tip — have taken turns as the dominant entrepôt.

• Sumatraisland

  The western shore. Sumatran polities, Srivijaya above all, controlled or contested the passage in earlier centuries from the other side.

• The Phillips Channelstrait

  The narrowest navigable section, near Singapore. Concentration plus constriction is what makes this a chokepoint rather than merely a busy route.

Its history, in short

Because the strait is the short way between two oceans, the ports along it have been valuable for as long as ships have used the route, and control of them has changed hands repeatedly: Srivijaya from Sumatra, the Melaka Sultanate, then Portuguese, Dutch and British seizures, then independent states. What has never changed is that shipping keeps using the strait, so whichever port serves it best captures the traffic. Every dominant port here has eventually been displaced, and none was displaced because the strait stopped mattering.

Timeline

Dates are shown on a timeline rather than as changing shapes on the map. The globe draws modern boundaries only, and tinting a modern outline to stand for a historical one would state something we cannot source.

Places that carry meaning

• George Town, Penang1786 onward

  Surviving shophouse streets, clan houses, mosques and temples record the mixed communities the strait trade assembled — Chinese, Malay, Tamil, Arab, European — in one street plan.

• Singapore1819 onward

  At the pinch point. Its economy rests on handling, refining, financing and re-exporting goods that originate and end elsewhere, which produces both the wealth and the exposure.

Learn the language here

1. 1Understand which languages are spoken hereStrait of Malacca is multilingual. Start with which languages are used, by whom, and for what — the phrase list only covers one of them.Written by Globe Quest

Check yourself

• Why is the strait considered a chokepoint?

  It is the short route between two oceans and narrows to a few kilometres at one end

  Alternatives exist but are much longer, and the passage constricts near Singapore.

• What has changed most across the strait's history?

  Which port captures the traffic

  The route's value has been constant; the dominant port has changed hands many times.

Worth arguing about

• Three countries border the strait and the world's shipping uses it. Who should pay for its safety and policing?
• Every dominant port here was eventually displaced. What would displace the current one?

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